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The Abandoned An’ Forsaked – Did Iceman Really Lose His Powers During the House of M?

Every week, we will be examining comic book stories and ideas that were not only abandoned, but also had the stories/plots specifically “overturned” by a later writer (as if they were a legal precedent). Click here for an archive of all the previous editions of The Abandoned An’ Forsaked. Feel free to e-mail me at bcronin@comicbookresources.com if you have any suggestions for future editions of this feature.

Today we look at the short period of time when it looked like Iceman had lost his mutant powers due to the Scarlet Witch’s action at the end of the House of M….

As you may or may not know, the House of M saw the mentally unstable Scarlet Witch be manipulated into altering the world with her reality-altering powers to make mutants the rulers of the world. A small group of X-Men and Avengers tried to bring down the so-called “House of Magnus,” and during the melee, Wanda decides that mutants are the problem…

In the final issue, we learn what she did, she literally erased the mutant gene from almost all the mutants on the planet. Only a few hundred were able to be saved by Doctor Strange (shockingly, almost all of the most famous mutants were saved)…

While most of the famous mutants remained mutants, there were a few notable exceptions – Magneto, Professor X, Dani Moonster, Polaris and, it appears, Iceman…

Within a couple of years, all but Dani Moonstar would see their powers return through various methods.

Iceman, though, is a whole other story.

In X-Men #177, Bobby Drake deals with the lose of his powers…

In #178, though, he is captured by a militant anti-mutant group that figures nows is the best time to attack the X-Men.

He is about to be shot when…

In the following issue, we discover that Bobby never REALLY lost his powers…

So that was a pretty darn quick turnaround for an abandoned an’ forsaked!

If you have a suggestion for a comic plot/story idea that was abandoned an’ forsaked, let me know by e-mailing me at bcronin@comicbookresources.com